Connecting California

Dear Pope Francis,
You may be infallible, but your scheduler? Not so much.
The itinerary for your highly anticipated trip to the United States this September defies belief: You are only visiting the Northeast. I guess it’s understandable that you’d attend a major conference on families in Philadelphia, and no one can begrudge you a Manhattan stop to address the United Nations General Assembly. But a D.C. …

Has Hollywood’s foremost interpreter of California lost his touch?
That may seem a strange question to ask now that said interpreter—the writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson—is up for a screenwriting Oscar at this Sunday’s Academy Awards. But Anderson’s work often poses strange questions.
Anderson matters because, at age 44, he’s already the greatest California filmmaker ever. That’s a claim based not just on the ambition of his films …